I received an answer from Panasonic as I had queried what was the proper AC adapter for the DMC-FZ150. This is the response:

START
prodcameras@callcenter.us.panasonic.com to me
show details 10:13 PM (2 hours ago)
Thank you for your inquiry. Unfortunately the DMC-FZ150K dose not support an external power source.
Therefore there is no listed AC adapter for the unit.
We hope this information is helpful to you. Thank you for choosing Panasonic.
END

I hope this proves to be incorrect or I can find a work around as I will be doing a lot of time-lapse. I suspect it is wrong as when I mentioned before I previously called their tech support and got a gum smacking young man that didn't seem to know what a SDHC card was, and after looking it up was told incorrectly that the DMC-FZ150 did not support UHS-1 memory.

There is a rubber flap at the battery door edge that I suspect would accommodate a battery shaped adapter that plugs into an external AC power source. For example the Canon SX230 HS, comes retail with such a device by default.

Not a deal breaker for the DMC-FZ150 but something I will have to look into.

Btw, I received my Olympus TCON-17 and DMW-LA5E. It fits perfectly, but at the tele end the image stabilisation suffers. Zoom back a bit (can't go far back because you'll end u seeing the inside of the tube pretty quickly) and you'll get better stabilisation but that makes little sense. It's a nice (and cheap) addition, but you'll need a tripod and shutter release. Can't wait to try it this weekend.

In the FZ150 and FZ47 doc, it is mentioned that those camera support SD/SDHC/SDXC card but there are no words about UHS-I bus support.

I thus asked the question to Panasonic Support and here is the exact re-transcription of the conversation:
-Hi, Can you tell me if the camera fz150k is UHS-I enable ... or in other words, does it take advantage of the UHS bus of SDHC cards ? (me)
-Thanks for holding, checks show that they do support UHS-1 (panasonic support)
-Ok to confirm: the FZ150k is able to use the UHS-I bus ? This info is not in the manual ! (me)
-On I do apologize for the misinformation I provided you with, i was looking at the incorrect model. It doesn't indicate the FZ150 supports with UHS-1 cards. (panasonic support)
-Ok, thanks. Are you 100% sure ? this means that the camera write speed on the card is limited to HS speed (20 MB/s). (me)
-Yes I'm sure, the model doesn't indicate that it supports the UHS-1 cards (panasonic support)

On the other hand, in your review and on other forum many reports that the sandisk extreme pro memory card works perfectly on this camera with no lag (even at 5.5fps continous shooting)

This would mean (if the support answer I receive is true) that the camera just use the HS bus and thus that the transfer from the buffer to the card is around 20 MB/s.
However, considering that the camera can take 5.5 fps (with no limitation in the number of images) and the images produced (jpg) are arround 5 MB, this make 27.5 MB/s. This speed is not reached by classic SDHC cards and requires UHS-I. I'm thus a bit perplex.

All this appears to be an important question for the choice of the memory card, considering the premium price of the UHS-enable cards ... so I wonder is someone have any comments or more details ?

Thanks for your help,

Nico

ps: I bought the FZ150 with the Lexar Professional SDHC card. I will receive it soon and follow in this post to tell you is I face lag in 5.5 fps continuous shooting.

Last edited by NicoG on Tue Oct 18, 2011 9:13 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Hello Nico, and welcome to the friendly Camera Labs forum!
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Interesting thing you found out! (Unfortunately) Gordon used a UHS-1 card: "To put the numbers to the test I fitted the FZ150 with a 16GB SanDisk Extreme Pro UHS-1 card rated at 45MB/s. When set to 12fps at the full resolution, the FZ150 fired-off the quoted 12 frames in one second, confirming Panasonic's quoted speed." So is there anybody out there, having tested the fps with a non UHS-1 card?

Thanks,
Indeed, I read this in the review which make me think that the answer I had from Panasonic support is wrong!

In fact, from my understandings, I don't think the 12 fps mode is the problem as it is limited to 1 s (I may be wrong). It will just take longer to transfers the stills to the card.
However, the 5.5 fps continuous shooting mode is more of concern as there are no limitation in time and shoot frequency can be limited if the buffer is full and the card is too slow.

I use a 'regular' Class 6 Transcend SDHC card in both my GH1 and FZ150. If shooting both @ ±5 fps the GH1 starts to lag much quicker than the FZ150. But in the end it also does lag a bit. However I was quite (positively) surprised with the performance. It takes a couple of seconds before the lag becomes noticeable with this class 6 card. So maybe a class 10 would keep up with it.

So while I can't confirm the FZ150 has UHS-1 support, maybe you won't need it and can't tell the difference if the SD card is fast enough.

Btw, why would you need this feature? Do you want to know if it has UHS-1 support just for the heck of it, or do you need to know if it's possible to shoot 5.5 f/s without lag (on a 'regular' SDHC)?

If UHS-I is not supported (which seems to be the case), it would be great to know if there are some benefit using the sandisk extreme cards (SDSDX3, not SDSDRX3) as 30 MB/s seems to be reached only through a sandisk proprietary mode ?

Concerning the firmware update, I wasn't able to find any information on the web: Is that something the end-user can do ? if so, I wonder where to find some more information ? and, where to download new firmware (when a new version will be made available) ?